The apps have it!

I'd like to thank once again the delegates who attended our online apps workshop back in July: your comments have proved invaluable.

The mobile apps market is growing rapidly and is not as daunting as it may look if you've not already taken the plunge. Mirror this to when I started work in publishing in the early 90's; computers weren't even commonplace in the office yet! Tim Berners-Lee had just posted his message on a forum describing a possible new way of sharing and communicating information on networked computers. This passed many people by at the time (including me), but just two decades on the UN General Assembly last month declared access to it a fundamental human right, it is of course, the world wide web.

In just a few years we have seen amazing developments in research as well as the technology behind a lot of what drives the internet flourish; from the discovery of the amazing wonder material graphene to the report that some living organisms can actually live and reproduce using the toxic chemical arsenic; we wouldn't have made these and other discoveries without the world wide web.

The tablet market amongst other things is driving the next seismic shift in the computer industry with apps becoming an everyday part of our lives. Here at Materials Today and across Elsevier as a whole we're talking to you and working with you in building apps that will help you in your search and discovery.

We're building market places to allow you to present ideas and work with developers in building apps that will quite simply change people's lives. These tools are not only mobile apps but apps that will sit on your desktop and aid in the research, data acquisition, number crunching, and communication of your work.

We're always looking for new ideas so if you have any ideas, thoughts no matter how far-fetched, please do not hesitate in getting in touch. Who knows you might be the next Mark Zuckerberg!

At the Fall MRS I will be showcasing our new Materials Today iPad app. Our Materials Today app will bring you up to the minute news and features in a convenient tablet format. We're using the Apple iPad device in the first instance as a recent survey has shown most of our readers are using the iPad. Over the coming months we'll look at rolling this out to other formats.

If you'd like to be one of the first to get your hands on our iPad app then drop me a line to sign up to be a beta tester.

Enjoy this month's issue!